Front desk (WhatsApp assistant)

The AI Front Desk is coming soon: this chapter describes it ahead of its launch.

#What it is

The front desk answers your shop's own WhatsApp Business number with an AI assistant. It answers from your catalogue, prices, stock, opening hours, delivery areas and your own answers, and it checks each of them with the shop's own tools before it says anything: it never invents a price, a stock level or a free slot. It builds an order or a booking, reads it back, and only the customer's "yes" places it. When it should not answer, it hands the conversation to your team.

Customers can write in Gulf or other Arabic, English, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, Arabic in Latin letters or Hinglish, and get the answer in their own language. Imagine a karak café in Deira: a customer writes "two karak and a cheese paratha, pickup at 5". The front desk finds the products, prices them as the online shop would, reads back the total and the pickup time, and asks the customer to confirm.

The front desk is an add-on of the Online Restaurant and Chain plans. It costs AED 99 a month before VAT; the plans and add-ons are on the pricing page. Until it is on for your shop, its settings page says "The front desk is an add-on of your plan: ask us to switch it on." It is not in the Retail plan or in the buy-once desktop program.

#What you need

• Your own WhatsApp Business account on Meta's WhatsApp Cloud API, with the number your customers write to. You open it with Meta; CreekPOS connects to it.
• For orders: your online address and the online shop switched on, with pickup or at least one delivery area (see Online menu, shop and table QR).
• For bookings: Bookings with online booking switched on.
• The owner or a manager to set it up.

#Connecting WhatsApp

1. Open Settings → Front desk settings, part Connect WhatsApp.
2. Copy the Webhook URL and the Verify token shown there. The verify token is made for your shop and shown once: keep the page open until you have pasted it.
3. In your app on Meta's developer site, open the WhatsApp webhook settings, paste the address and the token, and subscribe to messages.
4. Back in CreekPOS, paste Meta's Phone number ID, the WhatsApp Business account ID, a permanent Access token and the App secret, then press Save and connect.
5. Press Check the connection. It answers "Connected to" with your number and its name, or the reason Meta refused. The line Last message from Meta shows when the last message arrived; "the signature did not match: check the app secret" means the app secret is wrong.

Once saved, the secret fields show "saved — leave empty to keep it". One WhatsApp number belongs to one shop. Disconnect stops the assistant at once.

#Ready to

Under Ready to, the page shows what works now: Answer questions, Understand voice notes, Look at pictures, Take orders, Take bookings and Send order updates after 24 hours. A missing one says what to do: switch the online shop on (Settings → Online), add pickup or a delivery area (Settings → Online → Shop), choose your online address, switch on online bookings (Bookings → Settings), or name an order-update template (see the 24-hour rule). When voice notes are not set up, a customer who sends one is asked to type. Whatever is missing, messages still reach the inbox and your team can answer them.

#Who answers: the modes

Who answers sets the mode:

A good start: Pilot with your own phone and your staff's. When you trust the answers, switch to Automatic.

#Name, tone and your answers

Name and tone: the assistant's name, its tone (Friendly, Formal or Brief) and a Welcome message (empty = the standard one).

Your answers (FAQs): up to 60 questions, each answer up to 500 characters: parking, allergens, catering, your return rules, whatever customers keep asking. Besides these answers, the assistant knows only what your shop's tools tell it: the catalogue, prices, stock, hours, address and delivery areas. Hours, address, delivery areas, fees and the minimum order come from the online shop, so you set them in one place, Settings → Online.

Some messages get ready answers that need no AI: a greeting, a thank-you or a goodbye gets a fixed line with your shop's name; "where are you?" or "are you open?" gets your address with a map link, or today's hours and the next opening.

What the assistant remembers about each customer is described in Customer memory.

#What customers ask: your shop's knowledge

Besides your answers, the front desk reads everything your shop already knows, and only that:

• your notes under Settings → Front desk → What customers ask: up to 40 notes of up to 2,000 characters each, for your rules on returns, allergens, parking, catering, large orders;
• your online catalogue: each product's description and options (a product without a description is known by its category);
• your opening hours, pickup and delivery areas, and your online shop's details (name, address, phone, your message);
• the stamp card's rule.

For each message it picks the few passages that fit the question and answers from them. Prices never come from your notes: they always come from the live catalogue at that moment, so a note can never quote an old price.

Questions it could not answer. When the assistant had no answer, or handed a chat over for lack of knowledge, the customer's question (with any personal details masked) goes on a list in the same settings, the most asked first. Answer one: your answer becomes one of your shop's answers and is used from the next message. Dismiss a question that needs no answer, or Reopen it later.

Try a question shows what the assistant would read for a question you type, before you rely on it.

#Customer memory

For each customer, the front desk keeps a short summary that carries from one conversation to the next: facts they told, preferences, problems still open and solved, what was promised, order and booking numbers. A regular who always takes the karak with less sugar does not have to say it again. The summary belongs to your shop only: the same phone writing to two shops is two separate records.

• Card numbers, bank account numbers, passwords and one-time codes are never kept in it.
• The conversation shows the summary to your team under What your AI remembers.
• Forget (owner) clears a customer's memory; Erase this customer removes everything about them.
• A customer who asks the front desk to delete their data gets a case for your team.

How long messages and pictures are kept is yours to set in Limits and keeping: 30 to 365 days (90 by default). The memory stays until you press Forget or erase the customer.

#Goals and team cases

Goals (Settings → Front desk → Goals) are what the assistant may suggest: order from your online shop, book, join the stamp card, leave a review (with your review page's address), or a call back from your team. A goal is offered only when it is ready (the online shop live, bookings taken, the stamp card on, a review page set). The assistant makes at most one suggestion per reply, not again for a few replies, never for 14 days after the customer said "not now", and never to a customer who asked for no more messages. The program adds your shop's own link itself.

Cases. When something needs a person, the front desk opens a case with a brief: what kind it is, the reason, a summary, the facts and the messages they rest on, what was already tried, the actions it proposes, and how urgent it is. It is marked urgent only when the customer's own words show it. A case is assigned, has a due time and notes, and moves from open to taken, waiting for the customer, and done; it can be reopened.

• A hand-off writes a case. A call back request, an agreed time, a request to delete data and a reply WhatsApp could not deliver open a case too, without stopping the assistant.
• Proposed actions are only proposals: approving or finishing one records it; nothing is done by itself.
• A time is saved as agreed only when the customer named that exact time, or said yes to it after the assistant proposed it.
• If nobody takes a case, the owner gets a reminder after your hand-off minutes and a second one two hours later.
• Closing a case does not switch the assistant back on: Return to the assistant on the conversation does that.

The inbox has a Cases filter, and each conversation shows its cases with their buttons.

#How replies are checked

The assistant answers first, in one to three sentences, and asks at most one question, only when the answer changes what happens next. It reads a burst of messages as one, says it is the shop's AI when asked, and never pretends to be a person. It never asks for card numbers, passwords or codes, never writes links other than your shop's own, and never offers a visit or anything your shop's information does not offer.

Every reply is checked before it goes. A reply about a picture or a voice note, or one that asks a question it already asked, gets a second check by another model. A reply that breaks a rule gets one repair; if it still breaks a hard rule, it is not sent and the chat goes to your team. A reply written while the customer sent another message is not sent either: the next reply answers both.

#Orders and bookings

Switch on Take orders here (the online shop's areas, fees, minimum, pickup and hours apply) and, with Bookings, Take bookings here (the online booking page's rules apply).

An order goes like this:

1. The customer asks; the assistant searches your catalogue and proposes the lines.
2. It prices them exactly as your online shop does (today's prices, options, offers, VAT, the area's delivery fee and minimum) and reads the quote back. Outside your hours, the order is scheduled for the opening. The quote stays open 30 minutes, and the inbox shows Quote waiting for the customer's yes.
3. Only the customer's "yes" (or the confirm button) places it: the AI can never confirm anything itself. Just before placing, the quote is priced again; if the total changed or a line is no longer available, the customer gets the new quote and the question again.
4. The order goes through the online shop's own checkout: pickup or delivery, cash on delivery, and your own rule for accepting orders. It reaches the till and the kitchen like any online order. A second "yes" never makes a second order.
5. The customer gets the order number, the total and the status. Later changes (accepted, out for delivery, delivered, rejected, cancelled) come back to them on WhatsApp.

A customer may share a location on WhatsApp: the assistant can use it as the delivery address.

A booking works the same way: the assistant offers the free times of the service, holds the slot for 10 minutes and asks the customer to confirm. Their "yes" books it, as confirmed or as a request, as your booking settings say.

#Voice notes and pictures

Voice notes (up to 3 minutes) are turned into text by a transcription service. The audio is not kept, only the words. A clear voice note is treated like a typed message. A doubtful one is read back to the customer before anything is proposed. One that cannot be understood leads to no action at all: the customer gets "I heard … Did you mean …?" with the closest product names, and is asked to type it or send it again. The inbox shows each transcript and how sure it was.

Pictures (up to 5 MB) reach the AI. A photo of a product: it searches your catalogue for it. A handwritten shopping list: it proposes the lines as an order. Anything else: it describes what it sees and asks. Pictures are kept as a smaller copy within your shop's picture space; when that is full, the customer is asked to describe the picture instead.

#Hand-off and the inbox

The conversation goes to your team when the customer asks for a person, on a complaint, when the assistant has no answer or the request is outside your rules, when something fails, when the day's answers are used up, or when someone presses Take over. The assistant then stops, and the customer gets one polite line saying that a member of the team will answer here. Every screen of the shop shows the hand-off, the Sell page with a badge.

POS → Front desk is the inbox, for the owner, managers and cashiers with the Credit right. Conversations that need you come first; the filters are All, Needs you and Assistant. In a conversation you have:

• the messages, with the pictures, the voice transcripts and each message's state (Sent, Delivered, Read, Failed or Not confirmed);
• the reply box;
• Take over and Return to the assistant;
• Assign to a member of staff, or Assign to me;
• Send again for a message whose delivery was not confirmed (it is never sent twice by itself);
• in Drafts mode, Send this draft.

When a hand-off waits unanswered longer than Alert the owner when a customer waits longer than (minutes) (15 by default), the owner gets an owner alert.

#The 24-hour rule and order updates

WhatsApp allows a free reply only within 24 hours of the customer's last message. The inbox shows "Free replies are possible until …"; after that it says that WhatsApp allows no free reply until the customer writes again, and the reply box refuses.

Outside those 24 hours, only order updates can go, through a template you have had approved in Meta. Enter its Template name and Template language code under Order update template (approved in Meta); it carries the order number and the status. Without a template, a late update is recorded as not sent. Marketing messages are never sent.

#Stop words

A customer who writes "stop" or "unsubscribe" (or the same in Arabic), or one of your Extra opt-out words (comma-separated), gets one confirmation line and nothing more until they write "start". The inbox shows "This customer asked for no more messages."

#Usage and daily limits

This month shows the conversations, messages in and out, answers by the assistant, voice minutes, orders, bookings and conversations handed to the team, with the line "Answers by the assistant today: … of …".

Past the day's limit, conversations go to your team with the polite line. One customer can get up to 20 AI answers an hour; past that, their conversation goes to your team too.

In Limits and keeping you can set a lower number of AI replies a day for your shop. Past the day's limit or your shop's daily budget, messages are still taken in: they reach the inbox for your team, and nothing is lost.

#Privacy

• Messages travel through Meta (WhatsApp), on your own WhatsApp Business account.
• To answer, the AI provider used for Ask your shop receives the conversation's last messages, the pictures the customer sent, your shop's facts and what the tools return (the catalogue, your hours, that customer's own orders). Voice notes go to a transcription service, only when voice notes are on. Under their API terms, these services do not use them for training.
• Card numbers, bank account numbers and the word after "password", "PIN" or "CVV" are masked before anything is stored or sent.
• Conversations and pictures are kept 90 days, or what you set between 30 and 365; the audio of voice notes is not kept. The customer memory keeps no secrets. Each shop's conversations are its own: the same phone writing to two shops is two separate records.
• Erase this customer (owner only) removes a customer's conversation, messages and pictures for good. Deleting your account removes everything.
• A shop without the front desk sends nothing.

More on the AI Front Desk page.